Making the Case for Ecosystem-based Adaptation: Building on the Mountain EbA Programme in Nepal, Peru and Uganda, is a legacy document of the EbA Mountain Programme, delivered through a partnership between the German Government, UNEP, UNDP and IUCN, together with the Governments of Nepal, Peru and Uganda.

The volume provides guidance on both key conservation management and key business development strategies. It includes an introduction to the critical elements of ecotourism management planning including zoning, visitor impact monitoring, visitor site design and management, income generation mechanisms, infrastructure and visitor guidelines. Part II outlines the business planning process.

The purpose of the scorecard is to assist governments, donors and NGOs to investigate and record significant aspects of a PA financing system – its accounts and its underlying structural foundations – to show both its current health and status and to indicate if the system is holistically moving over the long-term towards an improved financial situation.

The brochure outlines UNDP's work on biodiversity management through two Signature Programmes: 1) Unleashing the economic potential of Protected Area systems and 2) Mainstreaming biodiversity management objectives into economic sector activities. It further highlights examples of UNDP's contributions towards the organization’s broader work on environment and sustainable development.

The report provides a general description of the hydrology of natural, damaged mires and depleted peatlands, as well as technical approaches and methods of restoration of hydrological regimes currently applied in international practice and falling within the framework of the UNDP-GEF project on re-naturalization of degraded peatlands in Belarus.

The booklet, by Ecosystem Marketplace, provides context and background information on current developments in the payments for ecosystem services (PES) arena relevant to the Ghana Katoomba conference, held in Accra, Ghana, in October 2009. The conference is the fifteenth in a series of Katoomba conferences designed to stimulate and strengthen environmental markets around the world.

The report focuses on the benefits of biodiversity and the MDGs. The importance of biodiversity to development objectives is also discussed in the context of the WEHAB Initiative and the Convention on Biological Diversity. The report also highlights the role of biodiversity in achieving the targets of each of the MDGs, and considers links between climate change, biodiversity and the MDGs.

The publication showcases the achievements and results from UNDP projects undertaken around the world. It highlights UNDP efforts, funded by GEF, to mainstream biodiversity issues, build institutional capacity around the world, and support the implementation of the Program of Work on Protected Areas under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Fast Facts

Human survival and wellbeing depend upon biodiversity and healthy ecosystems, and the goods and services they provide—such as food, medicines, crop pollination, filtration of pollutants, and protection from natural disasters. This contribution is neither fully recognized nor valued in markets. As a result, ecosystems, species and genes—the building blocks of biodiversity—are being degraded at an unparalleled pace as natural resources are being exploited without consideration for their broader ecosystem and economic values. The poor, especially in rural areas, face the most severe impacts of such changes as they directly depend on ecosystem goods and services for their survival and wellbeing.